Hoover Evidence Quiz Study Guide

Hoover Administration Key Players:

  • Andrew Mellon - Secretary of the Treasury (1929 - 1932)

  • Ogden Mills - Undersecretary of the Treasury Secretary (1929 -1932), later the Secretary of Treasury (1932 - 1933)

  • Henry Stimson - Secretary of State (1929 - 1933)

  • Charles Curtis - The Vice President (1929 - 1933)

Key Historians from PPP#4 Matching

  • David E. Hamilton, Associate Professor of History, University of Kentucky

    • Affiliated with the Miller Center, writes on Hoover

  • Glen Jeansome, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

    • Wrote The Life of Herbert Hoover: Fighting Quaker 1928 - 1933 (2012)

  • Charles Rappleye, award-winning investigative journalist

    • Wrote Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the Presidency (2017)

  • Kenneth Whyte, author and historian

    • Wrote An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times (2017)

  • David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian, Stanford University

    • Wrote Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929 - 1945 (1999)

  • Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

    • Wrote Lord of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (2010)

Presidential Administrations - Watershed Events Chronology FITB Q’s

  • President Chronology

    • Hoover (1929 - 1933)

    • McKinley (1897 - 1901)

    • TR (1901 - 1909)

    • Taft (1909 - 1913)

    • Wilson (1913 - 1921)

    • Harding (1921 - 1923)

    • Coolidge (1923 - 1929)

  • Past Watershed Events

    • Gilded Age (1870 - 1900)

    • Spanish-American War (1898)

    • Progressive Era (1890s to 1920)

    • Great War (1914 - 1918)

MCQ and Matching Topics

  1. Causes of the Great Depression

    1. “Economic Anemia” Abroad (Impact of WW1 in Europe)

      1. “The lingering distortions in trade, capital flows, and exchange rates occasioned by the heedlessly punitive Treat of Versailles” - David M. Kennedy

    2. A few global central bankers made decisions in the 1920s regarding the connection to the gold standard. This includes American policy by the Federal Reserve Banking System

      1. Four central bankers, Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Émile Moreau of the Banque de France, Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

    3. Economic Trends and Policy in the U.S.

      1. Between 1918 and 1929, the share that went to the wealthy Americans rose, while the share that went to the poorest fell

      2. Misdistribution of the country’s wealth in the 1920s (gap between the rich and the poor)

        1. In 1928, the top 1% made 19.6% of the nation’s income

        2. In 1929, the top 5% of all American households earned 30% of the nation’s income

      3. American Prosperity in the 1920s was uneven and left out many cohorts, especially recent immigrants, African Americans, and rural white farmers

      4. American Tariffs (1922, 1930)

        1. The Fordney McCumber Tariff of 1922 (Harding Era)

          1. A law that raised American Tariffs on many imported goods to protect factories and farms. The U.S. Congress displayed a pro-business attitude in passing the tariff and in promoting foreign trade by providing huge loans to Europe

        2. Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 (Hoover Era)

          1. Raises duties prohibitively high on many imports. President Hoover signed the act despite the urgings of many economists. Rather than solving the economic crash, it caused other countries to also raise their tariffs. Such “economic nationalism” exacerbates both the international depression and nationalist tension

      5. Over-production by both farms (crops) and factories (consumer durables)

    4. Failure of the poorly regulated American Bankings system

      1. Including an array of small regional and local banks around the country

        1. Failure of the banking system:

          1. “A curiously ramshackle, poorly regulated banking system, a legacy of Andrew Jackson’s long-ago war on central banking, had managed to wobble its dysfunctional way into the modern era. Some twenty-five thousand banks, most of them highly fragile “unitary institutions with tiny service areas, little or no diversification of clients or assets, and microscopic capitalization, constituted the astonishingly vulnerable foundation of the national credit” - David M. Kennedy

    5. Role of the Federal Reserve Board in the United States

      1. Federal Reserve System certainly did not do anything to alleviate the Depression in its early years. It followed some very mistaken policies of tightening credit just when credit should have been loosened

      2. The gold standard impacts the international monetary supply

    6. The Gold Standard, Deflation, and Depression

      1. The Gold Standard rendered the international monetary supply inflexible

      2. Fixed exchange rates are set within the U.S. by a common currency: they were set between countries in the 1920s by the gold standard. The current view of the Great Depression gives the gold standard a major role in its causation and transmission

      3. The gold standard in the 1920s was characterized by:

        1. The free flow of gold between individuals and countries

        2. The maintenance of fixed values of national currencies in terms of gold and therefore each other

        3. The absence of an international coordinating or lending organization like the International Monetary Fund (which was created after WW2)

    7. Stock Market Crash of October 1929

      1. While the crash did not cause the Great Depression, it was an important factor in its development and a highly visible sign of it

      2. Occurred due to extensive speculation

      3. Roger W. Babson was the first to predict it, drawing on evidence that consumers’ credit burdens were increasing, steel production was dropping, auto sales were falling, and some stocks were showing signs of price inflation

      4. Many Depositors lost their savings in banks

        1. For some banks, the losses suffered in the crash of 1929 were more than they could absorb and they were forced to close

  • Side Note:

    • The Dust Bowl

      • Region on the western edge of the Great Plains of the U.S. that suffered from extreme drought and severe dust storms in the period from 1930 to 1939.

      • Seeds of the Dust Bowl were sown in the 1920s, when above-average rainfall, commodity prices, and easy credit led to many farmers to plow up the tough prairie grass to make room for their crops. These farmers practiced dry farming, and when the drought struck in 1930, the topsoil turned to dust in the subsequent summers of intense heat

  1. Herbert Hoover’s Background

    1. Born into a Quaker family in rural Iowa, he was orphaned at the age of 9

    2. Graduated from Stanford with a degree in geology. He became a mining engineer, traveling the world to evaluate prospective mines for potential purchase. By 1914, he was a millionaire, securing his wealth from high-salaried positions, ownership of profitable Burmese silver mines, and royalties from writing the leading textbook mining engineering

    3. WW1 brought Hoover to prominence in American politics and thrust him into the international spotlight. He ran the U.S. Food Administration, and he organized/administered several private relief efforts before, during, and after the war

    4. During the 1920s, Hoover rose steadily in Republican politics, serving with great ability and distinction in the Harding and Coolidge Administrations as Secretary of Commerce

      1. Hoover promoted a cooperative government approach to business

    5. Hoover easily won the 1928 Republican nomination for President. His platform rejected farm subsidies, supported prohibition, pledged lower taxes, and promised more of the same prosperity Americans had enjoyed during the Coolidge years

      1. Major campaign issues in the 1928 election between Hoover and Democratic Governor Al Smith was prohibition and Smith’s Catholic faith

        1. With Smith running for president, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected Governor of New York

  2. Election of 1928

    1. Hoover (R) vs New York Governor, Alfred E. Smith (D)

      1. Al Smith was the first American Catholic to gain a major party nomination

    2. The Campaign focused on Prohibition and the prosperity of the 1920s

    3. The Republican platform promised continued prosperity with lower taxes, protective tariffs, opposition to farm subsidies and to support for Prohibition

    4. The Democratic platform promised progressive ideals and supported the urban working class; wanted to repeal Prohibition

  3. Herbert Hoover’s Domestic Policy; Response to the Great Depression (1929 - 1933)

    1. Hoover believed in low government spending

    2. Hoover took office in 1929 with a display of optimism and the promise of a “New Day”

    3. Hoover came into the presidency as one of the foremost proponents of public-private cooperation--what was termed “volunteerism”-- to maintain a high-growth economy

      1. Volunteerism was not premised on governmental coercion or intervention, which Hoover feared would destroy precious American ideals like individualism and self-reliance, but on cooperation among individuals and groups

    4. Hoover began his presidency with a burst of energy and enthusiasm that demonstrated his progressive political in 1929

      1. He directed the Department of the Interior to improve conditions for Native Americans on government-controlled reservations

      2. He won passage of the Boulder Canyon project Act, which mandated the construction of a massive dam (the Hoover Dam) that would provide power for public utilities in California

      3. He appointed the conservationist Horace Albright to the National Park Service and placed nearly 2 million acres of federal land in the national forest reserve, demonstrating his belief in the conservation of national resources

    5. After the Stock Marker Crash of 1929, Hoover lost some of his optimism

    6. He ignored pessimistic forecasts and rejected calls for more aggressive government actions (like relief bills or bond sales to fund unemployment benefits) to combat the nation’s economic problems in 1930

      1. Traditional republican philosophy influenced Herbert Hoover’s initial response to the economic downturn

      2. He believed that only state and local governments should dole out direct relief in the crisis

      3. Hoover asked Americans to tighten their belts and work hard in response to the economic downturn in 1929

    7. Smoot-Hawley’s Passage in 1930

      1. Higher tariff rates, most economists and historians agree, did little to help the American economy as it swooned in the early 1930s. Instead, protectionism further weakened the international economy by suffocating world trade, which in turn made it more difficult for the U.S. economy to recover

        1. Hoover was unhappy with the Smoot-Hawley bill, especially the increased tariffs on many manufactured goods. In private, he described it as “vicious, extortionate, and obnoxious” but because it included increased tariffs on agricultural products, he felt compelled to sign it

        2. Over 1000 economists signed an open letter to Hoover begging him to veto the bill

        3. Hoover couldn’t bring himself to break with his own party’s congressional leadership

    8. By early 1931, members of Congress--especially Democrats and midwestern progressive Republicans---began to call even more vociferously for decisive government action to combat the effects of the Depression

      1. Hoover stuck to his vision for several more months and did not adjust the agenda until late in 1931

    9. Hoover signed the Agricultural Marketing Act which created the Federal Farm Board

      1. He refused to support subsidiaries for farmers

    10. In late 1931, Hoover changed his approach to fighting the Depression, justifying his call for more federal assistance by noting that “We used such emergency powers to win the war; we can use them to fight the Depression, the misery, the suffering from which are equally great”

    11. The role of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)

      1. New government lending agency in 1932

      2. The RFC made emergency loans to prevent railroads, insurance companies, farmers, states, and banks from defaulting. Its main purposes were to boost public faith in the nation’s big financial institutions and to strengthen the flagging economy

      3. After it was found that the RFC was giving most of its money to a few big companies, the organization began granting its funds more equally

      4. Hoover drew criticism for rescuing banks but not people

    12. Impact of the “Bonus Army” on Hoover

      1. During the peak of the Great Depression in 1932, the Bonus Army March of 1932 occurred when a small number of unemployed WW1 veterans staged protests in Washington D.C. to demand early payment of their war bonuses

      2. Hoover ordered the U.S. Army under General Douglas MacArthur to evict by force the Bonus Marchers from the nation’s capital

      3. Several senators and the superintendent of the police implored Hoover to not send MacArthur into the main camp. Hoover agreed and ordered MacArthur to not enter the main camp, but MacArthur ignored the order and proceeded to the camp with infantry troops and the cavalry

      4. In defense of the incident, Hoover adopted MacArthur’s stance and asserted that those involved were nothing more than “about 5,000 mixed hoodlums, ex-convicts, communists, and a minority of veterans”

      5. Hoover was criticized by the public for his response

    13. During the election of 1932; Hoover was hated partially because of the public perception that he was insensitive to people’s suffering and was a do-nothing president

  4. Hoover’s Foreign Policy

    1. One of Hoover’s most successful diplomatic initiatives was his “Good Neighbor” policy toward the nations of South and Central America. While most Americans associate the policy with FDR, it originated with Hoover. His approach had both symbolic and substantive elements

      1. In several instances, Hoover backed up this symbolism with concrete actions. He removed American troops from Nicaragua after the 1932 election. He signed a treaty with Haiti that same year, promising to end the American occupation by January 1st, 1935, and he arbitrated a dispute between Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, which Secretary of State Stimson called Hoover’s “greatest personal triumph”.

      2. Hoover also ordered the release of a 1928 State Department paper--”The Clark Memorandum”--that disputed the legality of American intervention in Latin America under the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

    2. The Stimson Doctrine failed to halt the Japanese in 1931 in China

      1. Hoover would go no farther than non-recognition